FDA vs EU Cage Match
A difference in philosophy
I once engaged in a long deep dive into GMOs, not to find out what they were, but to figure out why people were so violently divided about them. I read dozens of essays, studies, articles, and blog posts and I figured out that it all came down to two ways of looking at things:
Ooh, a new thing! Let’s try it and see if it works.
Aah! A new thing! Make it go away until we prove it won’t kill us!
It’s like what Dr. Grant said about astronauts vs astronomers.
I find this difference in philosophy to be true about a lot of things, so I wasn’t surprised when I started diving deep into EU vs US regulations when it comes to the chemicals and additives that we allow in our food, cosmetics, etc.
A lot of hay is constantly made about how the EU is so much better at banning bad ingredients than the US because they ban so many more. And if we know anything, it’s that more = better. But when you look at the issue more deeply, much like our wildly different philosophies about education, our philosophies about regulation come from our deeply held cultural values.
Americans value innovation over almost everything else. We are a nation of inventors, entrepreneurs, and people who believe that if you are going to do something, do it first. Our belief in innovation is closely tied to our belief that anyone can achieve great things, that no one is trapped in the same class system in which they were born, and that the highest thing you can achieve is inventing something that changes the world. We are all, at our core, Ben Franklin wannabes. And our laws and policies are designed to reflect that.
We are the first of the two scenarios that I listed above. Ooh! A new thing! Let’s try it! We believe in letting people play, experiment, and try new things, and if it works, awesome. If not, too bad, learn and try again. If it works and it hurts people, we’ll stop it. And this has led to some incredible discoveries. Many, many harmful products have been derived to be safe and effective ingredients. We made penicillin from mold, Vaseline from petroleum, and several hit TV shows from white people who, while deeply and impenetrably boring on their own, are highly entertaining in a group. Humans experiment and play and test and very often find that while nuclear energy can kill us all it could also light our houses for ten thousand years. And as a nation that believes in driving innovation above all, we are going to let you play with anything you want until we prove that the harm outweighs the good.
I love this approach, but I also see why a lot of people do not.
The EU, on the other hand, embodies the second scenario: Ah! Something new! Kill it dead! This was not only their colonialist motto for hundreds of years, it is also how they approach regulation. The EU bans products that have never been, will never be, and could never conceivably be considered to be added to any food or cosmetic product ever. The EU sees an ingredient it can’t pronounce and bans it before it can introduce itself. The EU smells something a little off and, unless it’s cheese, slaps a red stamp on it and tosses it into that giant warehouse in Indiana Jones where alien Nazi treasures go to die.
This makes sense when you think about it. The EU is America’s great great great great great great great great grandfather. The EU is constantly shouting “get off my lawn” to anyone who can’t show patents of nobility for six generations and whose plumbing can handle a garbage disposal. The EU once had an entire conversation with an empty chair on national television. The EU is also a marriage of quite a few very very old nations that all have their own cultures and values and histories and beliefs and managing all of those is almost as difficult as getting Mississippi and Vermont to agree on one single thing. Like most old people, the EU is not all that concerned with innovation. They are safety first, at all costs.
And that makes sense too.
Should America be heavier on regulation (looking at you “vitamin” industry)? Absolutely. Should the EU chill the F out and let the kids play around with plutonium because they might accidentally invent the world’s best shampoo? For sure. Are either approaches better or worse than the other? That all comes down to your own personal philosophy. I see pros and cons with both and I certainly do not think that either side has earned the derision and judgement that Americans receive because we don’t think we need to ban Martian saliva just in case we ever come across some.
Regulate more, regulate less. At the end of the day, I think we’re all doing alright.
Kat